


Always

by heathenpesticide (orphan_account)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 03:47:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3881089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/heathenpesticide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel/companion piece to Having Them Both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always

There is nothing that validates one's masculinity more than having a girl fall asleep in your arms. There's something to be said about making someone feel safe enough that they trust you when they're at their most vulnerable. Especially someone like Katniss Everdeen. It was different in the arena; we had an audience to convince. Those moments in the cave were pleasant, fleeting though they were, but both of us were so clouded by the haze of convalescence and panic and fear that it wasn't quite satisfactory. My mind was so consumed by pain at the time that I could scarcely enjoy it.

Something changed during our Victory Tour, though. Like something snapped and what was once an impenetrable wall between us suddenly came crumbling down. I felt it, and I know she did too, though I could see her struggling with herself, first trying to fight it, and then trying to make sense of it. I could hardly judge her for it. I knew what happened to her father, knew what awful burden she carried after suddenly being encumbered with the responsibility of being sole provider and protector for her family. I think a part of her didn't want to get close enough to anyone to become attached, because in her experience, being attached might mean losing them in some gruesome way one day. Which, in our situation, was not an irrational assumption.

My heart broke when I heard her screams from the hallway on the train, a vague sense of panic rising up in my chest when I ran in to rouse her. Of course I knew she was in no real danger, but I understood what was causing her distress. Because I experience them too. Night terrors, flashbacks from the arena. An echo of the horrors we escaped there, still ricocheting in our heads when our subconscious comes out to play. Mine are at least manageable, though still horrific - images of her slipping away from me, dragged off by some savage competitor in the Games, throat ripped open by a mutt, her eyes going dim from cold and starvation before I can get to her. Each time I find myself running toward her, following the sound of her screams, I always get there too late. But then I wake up and see her again, and everything is all right. I can only imagine what _her_ nightmares must be like. For a time, I'd formed a facade of an alliance with the Careers as a ruse to keep us both alive in the arena. Only she didn't know. There was no way for me to inform her of my plan. How she must have felt then, completely alone, thinking I'd committed an ultimate act of betrayal. I feel a stab in my chest even now when I think about it. Sometimes I wonder if her nightmares are about me betraying her and slaughtering her in the arena. I think what hurts me the most is that her mind might have ever made that connection in the first place, to think that I would have ever been able to do that to her.

But that night on the train when I'd gently coaxed her back to reality, soothing her with reassurances that sounded like trite platitudes in my own head, something in her face changed, and even as dark as it was in the compartment, I still saw it. Something softened there, and I think maybe she was less inhibited from the vestiges of sleep that still clung to her mind, but she'd asked me to stay. I wasn't sure I wanted to. Not out of lack of interest or distrust, but more out of concern for her. _How lucid is she right now?_ I'd thought. I didn't want to risk the chance of her waking up in the morning and not remembering her request, then panicking at my intrusion, and then this tentative connection I'd worked so hard to cultivate with her being damaged indefinitely. Most of all, I respect her, and I didn't want to exploit her in a moment of weakness just to get a chance to do something I'd always wanted to do.

She was so urgent in her request though, and I could see her grey eyes glinting in the dim light, pleading with me, some remnants of fear from her nightmare still clinging there, and I felt that innate lurch of protectiveness in me that supersedes any notion of prudence when it comes to her. I couldn't in good faith abandon her in that state, so I'd slid into bed with her and tightened my arms around her, closing my eyes at the overwhelming gratification that one little gesture of intimacy provided. It was the first time I could genuinely show her affection without the inhibition of injury and pain, or the intrusion of a camera crew, or some other pressing matter that made what little romance I could muster for her almost seem like a complete waste. At first she was rigid, trembling slightly with uncertainty, but in an instant she'd melted into my arms so easily, as if we'd been doing it for a lifetime. I'd come to appreciate the softer parts of the female body that night. One thing is certain, _seeing_ and _feeling_ are two remarkably different things. I'd admired her from a distance for years. But finally feeling the press of her body against me, the softness of her breasts swelling against me with each breath, her thighs pressed against mine, that pleasant texture only a girl's skin can have - it suddenly made being male a rather undignified annoyance.

I'd clenched my teeth against the tightening in my groin, which was no unfamiliar sensation these days, doing my best to regulate my breathing and concentrate on other things so that it didn't become too uncomfortable. And then I'd tentatively tested her boundaries, letting my hands wander, lightly exploring her skin with my fingers to see how far she'd let me go, wondering if perhaps somehow I might win her over. Initially it seemed as though she was going to reject me. Which would have been fine. I found that the mere act of finally getting to truly hold her was a small victory, and that would have been enough for me. But then there was that abandon of restraint, that defining moment where she yielded to me, and soon she was laying before me, thighs spread and helpless to the whims of my tongue. Truth be told, hearing her confession to me about her lack of experience, then looking upon the most intimate part of her and seeing that she was clearly still intact was something of a shock. I'd thought her situation with Gale was at least a casually intimate one, them always sneaking off to the woods together. Of course they were hunting partners, but I'd always parsed some other underlying dynamic between them, so I'd just assumed. But here she was, as unspoiled as myself, and I suddenly realized she'd never experienced the likes of the pleasure I'd given her.

What I did to her that night was something I'd been curious about trying for some time. My parents have always had something of a frosty relationship, and it's something of a shock that I'm not an only child. Out of some therapeutic measure to cope with their loveless marriage, my mother had an assortment of romance novels and erotica she'd secretly traded at the Hob which she'd done a poor job of concealing within the house. Being bored as I was one summer day, I'd stumbled across her book collection, not knowing what they were, and perused the pages, shocked at the detailed descriptions of intimate contact they provided. I remember blushing furiously and hastily returning the book to its hiding spot, but soon curiosity got the best of me and I skimmed through the pages, wondering if these were things people actually did in real life. Surely a couple that truly loved one another? Though I found the characters in the books remarkably contrived and cartoonish, nothing realistic about them; the men pompous swaggering fools with no real depth, the women swooning tarts whose sole existence revolved around how much they could make their men like them. But if women read these, certainly there was something about them that was appealing?

Hearing Katniss moan, seeing how easily I brought her to climax, I was pleased with myself that I'd pulled it off on the first try. All that reading seemed to pay off. I felt like I was truly prepared. The sound she made when she climaxed was arousing in itself - a strangled, throaty moan, a slow, deep breath, another moan carried on a sigh, and on it went, swallowed behind her clenched teeth as she writhed beneath my mouth, her muscles tense and spasming with each violent contraction brought on by my tongue. She about fainted when I'd finished her. I didn't want to speculate on something so narcissistic, but for a moment, I entertained the thought that I might possibly have been her first orgasm. But that couldn't be right. Surely she'd at least touched herself before? I was about to ask when I realized how uncouth it would sound, how potentially embarrassing it would be for her, and instead asked if she'd like for me to do the favor of getting her virginity out of the way. In retrospect, it was a bad idea. I never should have said anything, because we broached upon the subject of Gale, and there was an awkward tension for a moment before I reassured her and brushed off the topic entirely. I must have invoked some pretty strong feelings, because she seemed on the verge of breaking into a sob before I gathered her up in my arms and caressed her to sleep.

I must have awakened something in her that night, something subconscious that even she wasn't aware about, because long after she'd fallen asleep, her breathing slow and shallow against my neck, her hand crept to the persistent bulge in my pants and lightly began to rub a slow rhythm beneath her palm. It was such a strange moment, so uncharacteristic and surreal that I thought I was dreaming. She would never do this. I could feel her steady, even breathing warming my neck against her lips, the movement of her hand too lethargic and idle to be a conscious effort. I buried my face in her hair to stifle my moan. The heat from the friction only made my situation worse. I struggled to think clearly, cursing the way all the blood in my body seemed to rush to one spot, depriving me of my much needed senses. There was a small voice in the back of my head that deliberated on stilling her hand, knowing that she wasn't fully aware of her actions, but it felt so good that I couldn't much focus for very long. Never underestimate the power of instinct, I guess. Throwing two people together like this, alone and in such close proximity, it's inevitable. After a while it goes from awkward comfort and play-acting to body heat and bare flesh and mouths and heartbeats and thighs and suddenly you're no longer concerned about propriety or boundaries or death, you're just consumed by the inherent desire to find out what one another tastes like. No erotic fluff instruction manual required.

I gained new confidence on that tour. At some point I'd noticed she would frequently squeeze her thighs together, squirming in her seat to quiet the ache between her legs while occasionally stealing sideways glances at me. I couldn't deny how she seemed to warm up to me, how she began to send furtive glances in my direction and occasionally attempt - poorly, might I add - to conceal her tremble of excitement. Usually the immediate result of a carefully timed glance from me, it would always be prefaced by a chill that would visibly crawl over her skin, followed by a delicious flurry of movement that began at her throat, which vibrated down her body and ended with her toes, sometimes causing her to jerk one foot back as her breasts swelled with the sudden intake of breath. I would let her see my smug expression, making it obvious that I saw her, holding her gaze just long enough to make her uncomfortable. I figured out a new way to look at her, letting my brows rest a little too heavily on the bridge of my nose, my eyes steady and sincere on hers, but the slightest of a smirk touching my lips - just enough to make her feel scrutinized, but not threatened. Then the fleeting touches - chaste, but suggestive, always taking advantage of conveniently askew hemlines or anywhere there was bared flesh - a light hand on her waist, the small of her back, her wrists, the little crook at the inside of her elbow - her thigh if I was feeling adventurous - but always accompanied by the faint tickle of my thumb grazing slowly back and forth across her skin, just enough to distract her and remind her what I could do to her. I did this in public, during dinners, at dances, parties, anywhere we were in a throng of people who might see her subtle lapse in poise. Always I kept my gaze on her, delighting in the sudden dilation of her pupils, the vacant look that would temporarily creep into her eyes as she lost her mind a little.

I'd figured out at Snow's party that we'd failed. There was something a little too genuine about her elation, a little too tinged with the carefree abandon of someone who has nothing left to lose. I didn't say anything that would indicate that I knew. I kept it up because I realized that she was genuinely beginning to enjoy what we were doing. I'd glanced about the place, casing the mansion for guards, entertaining the idea of ravaging her away to Snow's sacred bedroom and leaving the stain of her virgin blood on the sheets. She might have agreed to it, considering how much she hates Snow. She would have jumped at the opportunity to humiliate him even in the smallest way. But again, I had that moment of hesitation at exploiting her emotions, and I immediately felt vile and brutish for even having entertained the idea. I'm not _that_ guy. And most importantly, though I didn't much like it, I still respected her tentative desire to let Gale be her first. I at least owed her that.

And then we'd returned home. I didn't miss how she'd crept off to the woods that one day, and how _he'd_ coincidentally ended up heading that way as well. There was a hollow ache in my chest, but I'd essentially told her to do it. I couldn't much protest. Especially since learning that theirs was an unrequited situation, and I of all people know how much that hurts. The longing, the emptiness, the misplaced jealousy and anger. It becomes unbearable sometimes. I can only imagine to what intensity Gale might feel those things, especially after the events of the Games. He deserves her so much. It really wasn't my place to begrudge her that. I actually wished at the moment that I _could_ be angry about it, because it would at least numb the ugly void that had settled coldly in the pit of my stomach. But what had made me give them my blessing that night on the way back to Twelve was when I'd thought about what she must be going through, put myself in her place, tried to understand how she must feel to have been thrust into this situation and forced into a romance with a complete stranger who never had the courage to speak to her until the prospect of death hung over our heads. Before, I'd had no one. I was, by all accounts, untethered. She'd had him for years. They very likely would have ended up married had she not volunteered in the reaping.

And then there was that dreadful day with the bread.

That's where I really fucked it up. I think about it all the time, and wonder if I'd played it out differently then, if I'd just gone to her, would it have changed anything about now? There I was, enacting some dismissive, flippant version of charity by tossing her our scraps when Gale actually helped her, supported her, protected her. Someone she could really trust, someone she'd built a meaningful relationship with. No wonder she preferred him more. No wonder she reacted the way she did when I confessed my feelings for her on national television during the interviews of the Games. The point is, I realized in a very sinking moment that she had every right to have Gale. And when I thought about it from Gale's perspective, he had every right to hate me. I'd hate me too. I hated myself by proxy just by mentally switching places with him. What a vile situation, my sudden realization at how Katniss really did get a raw deal in all of it.

My heart broke for her, and in the late morning hours before she awoke on the train back to Twelve, I laid awake with her in my arms, stroking her hair and occasionally pressing my lips to the top of her head, wishing I could take the past five years back and start over with that day in the rain. " _I love you,_ " I'd whispered against her ear. I still hadn't worked up the courage to tell her when she was conscious. I think it would have made her uncomfortable anyway.

Of course, they'd whipped Gale that day I spied them sneaking off to the woods. Poaching. Then I _really_ couldn't be angry with him. It horrified me to think if it had been Katniss instead. Seeing him broken, beaten, the horrific state his flayed back was in, made me sick to my stomach. He'd finally enjoyed one small pleasure, only to come back and be publicly tortured. Seeing how heartbroken she was at the sight of him, seeing him slumped at the post before Commander Thread, the least I could do was run to Gale's defense. I remember seeing the way she gingerly sat down next to him when they'd laid him out on the table in her house, shifting uncomfortably as if there was a soreness inside her that made it uncomfortable to sit. Then the abandoned furs I saw in a pile of refuse by the fence, furs that could only have come from the Capitol, with a small stain of blood marring the otherwise immaculate white pelt. I felt like I'd been stabbed in the chest when I walked into her house and saw her slumped at the table by his side, their fingers intertwined. Their lips were so close, there was no question they'd fallen asleep kissing one another. _She was never really mine_.

* * *

That was some weeks ago. Gale's better now. The Peacekeepers have grown in number, become more brutal. I sit across from Haymitch in front of Katniss' fireplace, trying desperately to appear calm and casual as we play a game of chess. Katniss is remarkably late, and we all know exactly where she is, but we're keeping up appearances for as long as possible, hoping we can delay whatever horrific fate is to come. She's proven time and again that she can easily work herself out of tight situations, though that's not what I'm worried about. I worry that she just left without us, figuring all of us too much of a liability to include in her escape plan.

Few things make me angry. Not long ago, when my voice started to deepen and the first vestiges of hair began to appear on my chin, there was a dramatic shift in my emotions, as if the slightest thing might set me off. I was easily annoyed, too frequently irritated. It was one day when my mother came at me with a rolling pin, with every intention of thwacking it across my face. She'd always been horribly abrasive and violent, constantly trying to rob someone of their dignity because of her displeasure with her own life. But I became so enraged with her that day, I couldn't see straight. I was at my breaking point, and something in me snapped. It was a feeling I'd never experienced before, my vision clouded with red, my entire world consumed by the overwhelming desire to hit something, and I reflexively jerked my hand up, catching the rolling pin in my palm just in front of my face, glaring fiercely into her eyes as I roughly wrested it from her grip and hurled it through the window of the shop, causing a few people out in the street to shriek and scurry away from the shattering glass. Then I firmly grabbed her by her wrists and guided her back against the wall, clearing the doorway so I could storm out. Not enough to hurt her, though it was apparent I easily could - just enough to restrain and maneuver her out of my way so that I didn't do anything horribly irrevocable. Two very profound things happened that day: one, that was the day my mother stopped hitting me, chiding me, or really even speaking to me altogether; two, I realized that I never wanted to end up like her - a volatile, unpredictable vessel of unchecked emotion that could turn dangerous at any moment.

I scared myself that day, wondering what sort of damage I might be capable of inflicting, and swearing to myself that I would never find out. She's never been the same around me since. Always sure to keep a wide berth, never meeting my eyes, as though I were a predator who might attack at any moment. Scurrying around me if we ever come to a doorway at the same time, occasionally barking out a small yelp if I get too close. I should probably feel some semblance of shame or guilt that I frighten my own mother to the point of skittishness now, but I figure it's healthy for her to finally know exactly how I felt for the entirety of my childhood at her hand. What matters is that I dedicated all of my effort to controlling my emotions after that day, learning to know when to let things slide, learning to pick my battles. Instead, I learned to replace those burning inklings of rage with positive things, like compassion, and empathy...and love.

But right now, I'm angry. Angry that Katniss would just abandon us without a second thought, or go and do something so reckless that had recently nearly gotten her best friend and lover killed. I'm angry that she would take such a risk with no concern for the consequences. I'm angry that she has an incredible habit of doing her own thing and telling no one where she's going. I'm angry that these Peacekeepers intend to incriminate her and the lot of us for a petty, despotic dictator who can't hold his own up against a sixteen-year-old girl who accidentally incited a rebellion. I picture myself violently sweeping the chess pieces into the fire, flipping the table and assaulting the Peacekeepers with a hot poker before throwing them into the fire as well. Aside from my mother, the only people to ever see that side of me are Haymitch and Katniss, briefly in the dome of the Justice Building in Eleven. And even then, it was only a very subdued version of the violence I can truly express. I don't want to frighten Prim and Katniss' mother. Instead I clench my teeth and capture Haymitch's rook.

To my relief - and admittedly, mild surprise - Katniss walks through the door, looking none the worse for wear and slightly disappointed that she won't have the luxury of immediately sinking into a chair. She's looking vaguely haggard and distressed, and I can tell she's been through some sort of ordeal. It's apparent by the look the Peacekeepers are giving her, they weren't expecting her, and they're slightly disappointed that she's somehow made it back. Haymitch gracefully takes everything in stride, and I follow his lead, making light banter about her day and playing along with the mock argument she cleverly whips out with her sister about the whereabouts of the Goat Man. Haymitch captures my knight. I watch her cross the room out of the corner of my eye, and though I'm sure no one else notices, I've been the one to surreptitiously watch her walk home from school everyday, and it's very obvious to me that there's something off about her gait - she's stepping more gingerly than usual, but hiding it very well. She's injured. I take Haymitch's queen. The female Peacekeeper petulantly asks what's in Katniss' bag. I don't violently sweep the chess pieces into the fire. I don't stab the bitch in the face with a hot poker. Haymitch checks my king.

I get up and cross the room to Katniss when she pulls out a bag of candy, and we play-fight over it before I sweep her into my arms, just as I feel her body cringe within my grasp and she gives a small yelp that she expertly turns into a playful protest of indignation. She doesn't fool me though, and I lighten my grip on her as my eyes meet hers, and we exchange a somber glance with one another that speaks volumes. She smells of pine and juniper and feels slightly damp, and standing so close to her, I see the pulse beating frantically at the base of her throat, feel her erratic breathing. She's stifling panic, or swallowing excruciating pain, or both. I keep my arm wrapped protectively around her, safely holding her up as she has a tense exchange with the Peacekeepers, who clearly have no cause to incriminate her and aren't doing a very good job of hiding their disappointment about it.

The Peacekeepers leave, her mother tends to her injuries, and she changes out of her damp hunting clothes before I guide her up the stairs to bed. Drained from the exhaustion of whatever she just went through, clouded by the pain of her injuries, and a little wobbly from the sleep syrup her mother gave her, she slowly pitches forward into me not a third of the way up the stairs, softly stumbling against my chest as she braces a trembling hand on the railing. She's lost weight on the Victory Tour, and her loss of balance doesn't even stagger me. I sweep her up into my arms, surprised that she doesn't protest, and carry her effortlessly up the stairs. I help her strip off the robe Prim procured for her, and she's in the same scant camisole and underwear she'd become so fond of sleeping in during the tour. I lay her in bed, gently guiding her back against the pillows and I smile a little as I look down at her, smoothing the hair back from her forehead and tucking it behind her ear before leaning in to kiss her forehead. I turn to leave but she fights through the sluggishness of the sleep syrup, grabbing my wrist with an intensity that must be taking every ounce of strength and willpower she has left in her. I see the request in her eyes before she even says it, the same eyes that pleaded with me that night on the train during our tour of the districts, and my heart lunges within my chest.

I don't even hesitate, and I'm seated on the side of the bed before she can even complete the request. Her hands are cold, and I softly take them between mine, warming them in my palms, and they feel so small and delicate as they shake within my grip. I want to ask how she got back through the fence, but I don't, because even in her house I don't feel confident that we're not under surveillance. She pulls my hand up and rests my palm on her cheek, and just this small display of affection tugs at my heart.

"Oh, Katniss," I whisper, wanting nothing more than to take her face in my hands and kiss her.

She stares at me for a long time, and I can tell by that probing, focused look in her eyes that she's struggling with something, deliberating on a decision. Her eyes travel down my chest, lingering on the muscles of my arms, and it slowly occurs to me what she wants but doesn't think she's allowed to ask. Perhaps because she thinks it's inappropriate with her mother and sister in the house. All things considered, we _are_ engaged, and it's _her_ house, not her mother's. She releases my hand and reaches forward to fidget with the hem of my shirt, and I keep a steady gaze on her, waiting for her to ask. It seems she suddenly can't meet my eyes.

"Katniss," I whisper, taking her chin in my thumb and forefinger so that I can tilt her head back, forcing her to look at me. " _Whatever you need_ ," I whisper emphatically, my eyes locked on hers with what I can only imagine is such a sincere expression that it's almost frightening.

Her brows come together a little, and there's a frailty in her eyes I'm not used to seeing. She seems so unsure of herself now, and I know it's likely the effects of the sleep syrup. She doesn't trust herself. I impulsively lean forward and kiss her, a chaste gesture where I barely press my lips against hers. Her fingers are still fidgeting with the hem of my shirt, and I feel them brush against the bare skin of my waist. I smile and lean back.

"Clothes on or off?" I ask softly, knowing she'll never have the courage to ask, but I know what she needs. She wants me to hold her the way I did on the train.

She hesitates, still struggling with herself as I patiently wait for her answer. "I want to feel your skin on mine." Her voice is meek, clouded by drowsiness.

I nod and rise up from the bed, carefully stripping down to my undershorts. She watches me with a steady gaze, openly inspecting my chest, my stomach, lingering on the bulge in my shorts with an almost hypnotic curiosity. A flicker of emotion passes over her face as her eyes nervously flit to my artificial leg, and for a short moment I think she might cry, but the expression vanishes in an instant. She melts into me when I slide into bed next to her, her fingers faintly kneading the oblique muscles at my waist, occasionally tracing the line down the inside of my hipbone. I close my eyes and breathe in her scent, stroking her hair as I feel myself grow hard at her idle touch.

"Was he at least gentle with you?" I ask suddenly, my voice still barely a whisper. "...Because I would have been. I'll only ever be gentle with you," I say, my lips grazing her hair.

I feel her smile against my chest, and she turns her face upward to press her lips to my neck. "He was," she says simply. "And I know." I think she felt me stiffen at the confirmation of what I already knew, because her fingers become a little more assertive in the way they stroke my hip and stomach, as if she's consoling me. "...I think about you at night, sometimes," she mumbles, her words slightly slurred now. "I think about your mouth on me and I touch myself."

I inhale sharply between my teeth, my arms tightening around her. Sleep syrup certainly does make one less inhibited. I know now why she's been so apprehensive - she's afraid of what she might confess under the influence. I smile into her hair and lightly run my palms over her back and waist. "Oh?" I say with what I hope only sounds like mild curiosity. I flinch a little at how hard I've gotten, but at this point I'm not really sure she'd care if she noticed it. "Does this happen...often?"

The tip of her nose is cold as it nuzzles against my throat, and a chill crawls over my skin. "Sometimes," she answers vaguely. Her hand smooths up my chest. " _Peeta..._ "

My name, carried on a sigh. Out of all the things she's ever said or done, this is what makes me the weakest. I never imagined her saying my name like that. Tinged with longing and affection.

"I wish it was okay for me to have you both. Why can't I just have you both?" She's almost mumbling incoherently now, but I understand her clear as day.

At first there's that twinge of jealousy I feel for Gale, but I'm distracted by something else. _She genuinely wants me_. That's what has her so torn. She wants us both. And she doesn't know what to do. She doesn't want to have to choose. My cheeks tighten at the smile that threatens to break through, and I suddenly don't dislike Gale so much. Her question makes me really think, for a moment. Why _can't_ she have us both? With the realization that she actually wants me, fantasizes about me, longs for me, the prospect of sharing her with Gale isn't really so bad. ...I'm strangely okay with it. I want to genuinely think about this for a moment, but her fingers toying with the line at my hipbone distracts me, and she's muttering something against my neck again, making it difficult to concentrate.

"Stay with me." Her words are so slurred now, her voice so thick with the narcotic she's taken that I can barely understand her, but I do.

I smile again, nuzzling her hair. " _Always_ ," I whisper.

It's probably the most restful sleep I've had in a while. If I'm plagued with images of her being torn away from me, I thankfully don't remember them. I slowly resurface in a shroud of warmth, fighting off wakefulness as long as possible because of how pleasant it feels. I vaguely feel the soft press of her body against me, the steady puff of her breathing against my neck, and I tighten my arms around her in my half-sleep as I nestle deeper under the covers. I feel the distant sensation of her lifting her head from my shoulder, feel the faint tickle of her fingertips grazing my stomach, and I finally will myself awake. She's on her side, raised up on her elbow and gazing at me with a content expression.

I turn my head into her and kiss her shoulder. "Were you watching me sleep?" There's a note of disbelief in my voice.

"Yes," she admits bluntly. She's lost the docility brought on by narcotic and is her typical, assertive self again. "I was just admiring your face. You're such a classic handsome. I never really got to appreciate it until now." She softly runs her fingers along my jawline - _"You could chisel glass with that thing,"_ the mayor's daughter once said to me - then rests her thumb in the cleft of my chin. There's something almost clinical about the way she scrutinizes me, like she's critically inspecting a rather healthy piece of game in the sights of her bow. I'm torn on whether to feel nervous or aroused. Then a little crease forms between her brows for a second, as though she's puzzling over something, and she grazes her fingertips back over my jawline again, caressing the smooth skin there. "You're old enough to grow facial hair. Most of the boys in the Games are. Why are you all so smooth, then?"

I turn my face into her hand and kiss her palm. "Some special product the prep team applies, like an aftershave. Prevents hair from growing back for a while. I guess they want us looking young and fresh for the cameras at all times."

"Hmm." She leans forward and presses her mouth to my jawline, dragging her lips across the smooth skin there. Her lips continue down my neck, tracing along my collarbone, across my chest, and I instinctively bring my hand up to cradle the back of her head, lightly stroking her hair as I close my eyes at how wonderful it feels.

"Mmm, that's really pleasant," I mumble, laying back against the pillows and feeling as though I might doze off again at the soothing press of her lips on my skin.

She stops just in the center of my chest, resting her mouth over my heart. I let my head fall to the side and slowly open my eyes to glance down at her, continuing to stroke her hair as I note her vacant expression. "I feel so horrible," she says quietly, not meeting my gaze. "Everything you did for me on the tour, all the pleasure you showed me - not once did I reciprocate."

I want to laugh, but I don't. I almost tell her how she would stroke me in her sleep, how her little hand was so persistent on finding the bulge in my pants and rubbing it incessantly as she slept, but I don't want to embarrass her, so I don't. Instead I pull her into a warm embrace, holding her head against my chest as I stroke her reassuringly. "It's okay, Katniss," I whisper against her hair. "All of that was just for you," I say, brushing my thumb across her bottom lip when she turns her face up toward me. "I wasn't doing it because I wanted to pressure you into returning the favor. I'm not a rapist, Katniss, jeez. I did it because I wanted to. I did it because I enjoyed the way it made you feel. _You owe me nothing_."

She lifts her head from my chest and fixes me with a pained expression. " _I owe you everything_ ," she whispers. "Everything you sacrificed, everything you did for me in the Ga-"

" _Hey_ ," I say sternly, silencing her with my thumb on her lips again. "You stop with that nonsense right now. Okay, yeah, you owe me," I say dismissively, "...but you will never, _ever_ owe me your body. That's _yours_ and _your_ choice to give. It's absurd to even think that I would expect that of you. Do you understand? Katniss, do you understand me?" My eyes are probing and sincere on hers, and I'm not sure there will ever be any way to sufficiently express how important this is to me.

She holds my gaze for a short silence, then nods slowly. She still looks faintly puzzled, and she eventually leans in to kiss me. "You're so serious about this," she mumbles against my lips. "I rarely ever see you so stern."

I smile to soften the solemnity of my expression and sigh in mild resignation. "I hadn't meant to be so grave," I say, my voice taking on a gentler tone. "I'm just so earnest about that type of thinking because of all the times I heard the other guys at school bragging about how they'd extorted sexual favors from girls because they felt any act of gentlemanly charity was currency for sex. Never mind being supportive and caring because you genuinely _like_ the girl and it's pleasant to simply be around her and make her happy. Why not just manipulate her into thinking she owes you her body? They'd recount the details of whatever transpired behind the slag heap and it would make me sick to my stomach. I could never even begin to fathom the motivation behind such savagery. There's no challenge in that, no gratification. It's repulsive and lazy."

She falls silent, her expression changing from mild puzzlement to pained incredulity. For a split second, she looks like she might cry. I gently take her hand and turn the palm upward, lightly tracing the faint blue lines of the veins in her wrist. She makes a small, contented sound in the back of her throat at my touch, and I bring her hand to my mouth to press my lips to her wrist, feeling her pulse quicken against me. She gives a little moan, closing her eyes as she trembles. "You're always so reliably good, Peeta," she says quietly, echoing Haymitch's words from District 11 when I lost my shit in the Justice Building. There's almost a note of tragedy in her voice. "I could never deserve you."

I feel a pang of some indescribable emotion when she says this, a storm of conflicting feelings ripping through my chest, causing me to choke a little. That she thinks I'm too good for her, that she has no idea how small she always made me feel in school when she'd catch me looking at her across the room and I'd timidly look away, that the talented huntress from the Seam and skilled trader in the Hob didn't think she was worthy, that she even thinks so highly of me at all to assume this...that she appreciates me in some way that I wasn't aware of until now. It throws me a little. At sixteen, she shoots game straight in the eye and trades with the shrewdest merchants in the black market to support her family. She immediately took over as head of household when her father died, never allowing herself time to grieve or rest. The child of the woman my father would have married in an instant, had that woman not fallen for the miner whose voice could make the birds fall silent in reverence when he sang. Katniss Everdeen is the strongest, most inspirational person I will likely ever have the privilege of knowing. _Never deserve me_. How could she ever think that?

"Well, I guess that's too bad, because that's not up for you to decide," I say finally, that cockiness from our Victory Tour creeping back into my voice without me even meaning to summon it. I think I'm a little angry. Frustrated that this girl who has accomplished so much independently, in the face of all the forces working against her, would think that the redheaded stepchild of a town tradesman would find her to be beneath him. I don't know if I'm more aggravated at her selling herself so short, or her underestimating my appreciation of her worth.

"What does it feel like?" she whispers after a short silence.

"What does what feel like?" I ask, apologetically softening my voice from the harshness that threatened to break through.

"To love someone. I mean, the way you love me."

My heart skips a beat, and I know she hears it, because she's laid her head back down in the center of my chest. I wish I could see her face, but she's cleverly concealed herself just beneath my chin, her cheek pressed against my anxiously dancing heart. Why is she even asking this? It's such a loaded question, and I'm not sure whether to be disappointed or hopeful at what it implies.

I draw a deep breath as I consider how to answer. "It's like...a hunger. But not in the pit of your stomach, like normal hunger, but rather in the center of your chest. A sort of hollowness that can only be satiated by holding that person against your heart. And if you don't, or can't, every waking moment feels like your chest is going to split open and spill out its contents for all to see. ...And the only way to keep yourself from shattering into a thousand tiny fragments, the only way to hold yourself together...is by holding _her_." I tighten my arms around her, that same sensation beginning to grow within me just from the mere act of describing it. "...Or him," I add as an afterthought, still trying to ascertain why she would ask such a thing.

I hear her sharp intake of breath as her heart dances erratically against me, and her fingers flex a little at their resting place just below my collarbone, affectionately grazing over my skin. When she says nothing, I continue softly, "Eleven years of longing, Katniss. Eleven years of feeling like I was about to break...that moment I first held you in that cave in the arena meant finally mending the hole in my heart, even if it was only temporary."

I instantly notice the change in her body temperature, her skin becoming so flushed that it burns against me. She rises up from my chest and fervently leans in to kiss me, her lips hungry and probing against mine in the most passionate display of affection I could have ever hoped from her. It's almost like an involuntary reflex, and she seems overwhelmed with emotion as she runs her fingers through my hair, softly biting my lower lip so that I moan against her mouth. This doesn't feel forced or coerced the way it usually is in front of the cameras. This feels pleasantly, breathtakingly real. I've only sensed this inkling of urgency and passion in her a couple of times before, the first time being when we kissed in the cave after she'd returned from the Cornucopia, after both of us had healed enough to really be able to enjoy it. I remember how that moment stood out amongst the others, the way her heart pounded against me, the swell of her breasts as the heat radiated off of her, the way her usually tense muscles relaxed in an instant and she melted into me with the effortless abandon of someone who isn't, for once, faking it.

This moment is just like that, only it's amplified tenfold. She's descended on me with an almost feverish hunger, and my hand instinctively smooths up her back as I pull her against me. I'm painfully aware of my obstinate maleness now, and I know there's no hiding it from her, no skillfully maneuvering myself around her to avoid bringing it to her attention as I've done thus far, and I tensely await her uncomfortable reaction when she notices it pressing persistently against her thigh. Instead, she rubs herself against me, and there's no doubt it's intentional. A strangled moan dies in my throat, and her hand begins to faintly trace down the center of my chest, across my stomach, below my navel and then deliciously rubs along my length, slowly and deliberately, just the way she used to do in her sleep. My hand comes up and tangles in her hair as I press her mouth against mine, my unharnessed excitement causing me to kiss her a little more roughly than I would have liked. She doesn't seem to mind though, and she continues rubbing me with the palm of her hand, the bulge in my shorts swelling beneath her soft coaxing.

She pulls out of the kiss, continuing to rub me in what I can only imagine is curiosity, her eyes trained on mine as slight uncertainty flickers across her face. She seems mildly confused, her hand continuing in a slow rhythm that suggests she's exploring, figuring something out. I hate to think about what may have transpired between her and Gale, but I wonder if she's ever done this before. She seems faintly unsure of herself, inexperienced with male anatomy.

"You're doing just fine," I whisper, my voice nearly gone from how breathless I am.

She keeps her eyes on mine as her hand gently pulls back the covers, and she eventually tears her gaze from me and glances down, her expression unreadable as she stares at the bulge in my shorts. She's almost detached, like she's studying a subtle curiosity, and she rubs her palm over me again, as if she's delighting in the way it feels beneath her hand. "No wonder you were so confident that day I found you by the stream," she muses quietly, as though she's speaking more to herself than to me.

It takes me a moment to discern what she means, but then it occurs to me that she's talking about that moment in the arena when she came searching for me after Cato wounded me, and she had gone from lethal to squeamish in an instant at the prospect of removing my clothes and cleaning my wounds. _I don't care if you see me_ , I'd said to her when she had me cover myself so she could remove my undershorts and wash the blood and dirt away. I feel the smug grin begin to tighten my cheeks before I have the mind to suppress it. I suppose she's right - dying though I was in that moment, I _was_ a little confident. Since I hit puberty, that small boost in confidence has always been there. I wouldn't be so narcissistic as to consider myself well-endowed, but I hold my own well enough. Sharing a washroom with two brothers growing up, I can at least say I'm...luckier than most in that area. And it occurs to me that this is what has her puzzled - she wasn't expecting such an overt display of virility and manhood. A chuckle escapes my throat, despite my attempts to stifle it.

She's slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of my shorts, and her eyes meet mine again for just a second before she's inching my shorts down my hips. She's hesitant, as if she expects me to resist and show some form of uncharacteristic modesty. A low chuckle escapes my throat, and I surprise myself at how devious it sounds. "Oh, you're in too deep now, Everdeen. There's no backing out now." My voice has dropped an octave to that low purr that always seemed to put her in a half-swoon during our Victory Tour. I'd learned to summon it on command when I needed to elicit some kind of emotional response from her for the cameras, but after so much practice, it's become more of an unconscious reflex than a calculated effort.

As if encouraged by my audacity, she assertively removes my shorts, a small gasp escaping her lips as I'm laid bare before her. I watch her steadily, closely inspecting her reaction, though her face is hard to read. Her eyes linger a little on my artificial leg, her fingers softly touching where metal and plastic meets flesh. She's only now seeing it up close for the first time, where they'd had to hack off most of my leg to just above my mid-thigh. I'd made a point of always wearing training pants to bed during our Victory Tour, knowing that seeing the artificial limb might make her uncomfortable. Her hand shakes as she momentarily traces the thin, dark striations fading into the flesh of my upper thigh where the cybernetic implants connect nerve endings to mechanics, and there's that brief flicker of emotion in her face before it settles back into her neutral expression, and she turns her attention back to the protrusion between my legs. Admittedly, the mere act of her seeing me, openly looking upon my nakedness is arousing itself. She runs her fingers lightly over my length, and I close my eyes and sigh. This is getting painful.

"They let you keep your hair," she says finally, running her fingers through what little my prep team left down there. I can hear a hint of a pout in her voice.

"Not all of it," I say grimly. "They trimmed it down considerably. But they didn't rip me clean like they did with you. Still, it wasn't pleasant."

I'm not even entirely talking about the hair removal process. That, I could deal with. The unnerving part was the almost feral look in Portia's eyes when she came in to assess me afterwards, my naked body lain on a table before her as her cold, probing fingers moved over my flesh. The way her nostrils flared as she made a little defeated whimper in the back of her throat, as though she were eying up a particularly savory piece of meat - I'd never felt so objectified. I wasn't sure I enjoyed the feeling. Even worse, though my mind recoiled, my body responded, ever keeping up the habit of the male body betraying conscious thought or effort. She'd smiled down at me, her breathing having become considerably slow and heavy, as though she were stifling extreme arousal. Technically, the very first touch of a woman I ever experienced was in a remarkably detached, clinical setting, her long, manicured fingernails grazing over me as I silently willed myself not to grow erect at the sensation, though hell knows all the good it did.

Thankfully she didn't brazenly rub me as Katniss did, never outright indulged in feeling me up, but her fingers playfully danced over the contours and slopes of my body, a gentle squeeze here, a fleeting press of fingers there, tweaking and pinching my flesh, assessing every nuance of my form so she could expertly attune my wardrobe. It was a relief that Portia turned out to be rather professional in the long run, but she never could entirely hide how much my naked body excited her. "If only you were a little older," she'd muttered one evening as those cold fingertips kneaded my thighs, inching them apart so she could measure my inseam. Just having her on her knees before me was as mildly uncomfortable as it was conflicting for me. She'd leaned in a little too close as she did it, her lips coming so close to my thigh that I was sure she'd kiss me there. I could feel the heat of her mouth, feel the slightest tickle against my skin as she brushed her lips almost imperceptibly against me, but she'd backed off in an instant, jaw clenched and chest heaving as she battled with herself to maintain poise. Her eyes always lingered a little too long on the bulge in my shorts, and it was the best I could do not to tremble or stiffen or show any form of vulnerability for fear it would get her to pounce on me like the wildcat I figured she was.

Of course, those moments with Portia also may have contributed a little to the confidence I felt in the arena with Katniss when I'd so innocently planted the seed of nakedness in her head.

Katniss is smiling a little though, lightly grazing her fingers over the tasteful amount of hair I have left between my legs, and it's almost a sweet expression that's settled on her face, causing the awkward memories of my stylist to fade from my mind in an instant. "I always wondered how blondes matched up in this regard," she says. "Your hair's a bit redder down here." Her brows pucker a little then, and she runs a single finger along my length, causing me to give a small tremble. Her finger comes to encircle the tip, exploring the taut flesh there. "Yours is... _different._...I mean, from the men I've seen my mother and sister take care of." She seems to be sizing up the discrepancy, deciding on whether she likes it or not.

"It's called circumcision. It apparently used to be a common practice, but fell out of style since the Dark Days, at least in the districts. Not a lot of parents have it done to their boys anymore since those with the medical expertise to do it are so rare now, but it's supposed to be healthier and cleaner...not to mention more, uh, aesthetically pleasing." I say this last part a little sheepishly.

She's gazing at my erection with unbridled fascination, and she gives a small nod of approval. "It is rather pretty," she admits distantly. She leans forward and presses her lips to my stomach then, placing a few sweet kisses against my flesh, her mouth moving a little lower with each one. I'm about as swollen as I think I can possibly get, my arousal rigid and persistent as it rests just under my navel, aching for her touch. Her mouth is getting closer and closer with each kiss, and there's no mistaking where she's going with this. I watch her in silence, momentarily paralyzed by incredulous anticipation. Just the image of her head inching lower down my abdomen sends me into a mild frenzy.

"Oh Katniss, you are _not_ about to do that," I gasp, but I hiss sharply between my teeth when I feel her soft lips press against the tip of my erection.

Only her eyes move, shifting upward to fix her gaze on me as her lips continue kissing along my length, and I know I did this very thing to her on the train. It's a look that slays me, and I can only now fully appreciate what she must have felt when I did it to her. "It's only fair," she mumbles against me. "You did it for me." The sensation of her lips moving against me as she speaks is maddening.

She places a trail of kisses along my length, her lips parting slightly so that I can feel a hint of the heat of her mouth on me. She remembers the way I cruelly teased her with foreplay, and this is her way of paying me back. I close my eyes and lay back against the pillows, focusing on my breathing because it feels like I'm about to hyperventilate. Then I feel the tip of her tongue on me, tracing a line from base to tip, encircling it the way she did with her finger just a moment before. I moan and squirm a little, desperately wanting release. I feel the vibration of her laugh against me, and it only exacerbates my ache.

"I don't really know what I'm doing," she admits quietly, placing another kiss on the tip of my erection.

I open my eyes and lightly caress her face, smoothing the curtain of her hair back so I can better see what she's doing to me. "You're doing an incredible job so far," I whisper, and she seems genuinely encouraged by this.

I only watch her long enough to see her lips part as she takes me in her mouth, and the sight of it alone is maddening enough to send me over the edge, so I give a tortured moan and close my eyes again. My hand affectionately cradles her head as she envelops me in the warmth of her sweet little mouth - _that mouth_ \- and I distract myself by running my fingers through her hair so I don't lose myself too quickly. Her tongue is hot and slick as it runs over me, and no amount of erotic novellas and descriptive details of this act could have prepared me for how unbelievably incredible it feels. There's a mildly uncomfortable sharpness that grazes against me, and I stiffen slightly, unable to stifle the sharp gasp that escapes me. I look down at her, delicately steadying her head so that she eases up a little.

"Just watch the teeth," I instruct her gently, my thumb softly grazing her cheek.

She opens her jaw a little, but I can see she's already struggling as it is. She has a particularly small mouth, and her jaw only opens so wide. It will get uncomfortable for her very soon, and though I feel a pang of guilt and sympathy for her, I can't help but feel a little flattered at how she can't easily fit me in her mouth. Her fingertips are still caressing my stomach, and that sensation combined with the heat of her mouth and the way her tongue works around me, her lips stroking my length, sends me over the edge. Her eyes shift upward toward me again, and the sight of her innocent gaze combined with me in her mouth brings on that familiar tightening in my balls, and I steady her head again, trying to still her.

"Katniss, I'm about to - "

She petulantly resists, refusing to ease up, and as if in direct defiance of my concern, she swirls her tongue around my tip, causing me to explode violently in her mouth. I lose myself for a moment, forgetting where I am or that I should probably be stifling my moans, and by the time I realize the sound could have audibly carried downstairs, it's too late. Ah, well, _fuck it_. We're engaged. What concerns me more in this moment is where all my stamina went. Five years jerking off, drawing it out on purpose to see how long I could go before giving in, and it all goes down the drain once Katniss Everdeen takes me in her gorgeous little mouth. Sounds about right.

I pant against the pillows for a second as she extracts herself from me, my eyes squeezed shut as I will my trembling, tense muscles back to normal, then I reach over and open the bedside drawer, digging through the contents until I find a small handkerchief neatly folded in the back, which I shake loose and hand down to her. She gratefully takes it, immediately spitting into the linen a few times before neatly folding it back up and handing it back to me. I'll probably throw it in the bin later, but for now I just set it on the table. I gaze down at her and lovingly stroke her hair as she rests her chin on my hip, and her expression is questioning, wondering if she did okay.

"That was lovely," I whisper. "I wasn't sure if it was okay to pop off in your mouth. I get the feeling some girls might find it unpleasant. I felt it would be appropriate to warn you."

She smiles at me as I slide back into my undershorts, and there's a warmth that creeps into her eyes that gives me a little hope. I'm finding, little by little, that she's consistently taken off-guard by even the most trivial courtesies I extend toward her, which is admittedly a little saddening. That she doesn't already expect this, that she's always so concerned about being indebted to people simply because they treat her like she's a human being. It's monstrous.

"Come here," I say softly, finding that hollowness creeping into my chest again as I think about how alone and mistreated she must have felt all these years. How I wish I could have been there. "Let me hold you a little longer before we have to go downstairs."

She nestles back against my right side, her thigh draped over mine, and I appreciate that she's settled on the opposite side of my prosthetic so that I can feel the intense heat emanating from between her legs, how slick she is down there, the moisture so abundant that it seeps through the fabric of her underwear and onto my thigh. Could she have possibly gotten aroused simply by pleasuring me with her mouth?

"You know now I'm going to have to reciprocate," I say, a hint of seductive warning in my voice. Then something occurs to me. "I hope you didn't just do that because you felt you owed me," I add darkly, knowing how she feels about debts and keeping an even score.

"Oh, well that's not fair! So you're the only one who's allowed to reciprocate?" I feel a little relieved when I hear the playful undercurrent in her voice.

"That's different. I would have done it anyway. I just use reciprocation as an excuse. You know how much I love eating you out."

She moans and gives a little tremble at the suggestion. "How are you so good at this type of stuff, anyway? I wouldn't think that you had a very good...home example." Her voice drops off a little at the end, as if she's just realizing how uncouth and insensitive she might sound, but I'm not offended.

I give a short laugh instead, an encouraging sound when she cringes in regret. "It's okay, I know my mother is a bit of a shrew. And my father was always a little too hung up on your mother to really give much of a damn. ...He never quite got over her, I don't think. It was always kind of obvious when he'd gaze across the square at her at public gatherings..." I trail off, noticing that she's become very still, aside from the nervous pounding of her heart. I've taken an uncomfortable segue and divulged too much. "It's mostly instinct," I say finally, my voice subdued with awkwardness. "I let my emotions guide me, do what I feel. You should try it sometime. It actually works. Just...follow your urges. You started to do it on the train during our tour, but I think you were too confused about what was happening to you to give in to it. I could tell by the way you kept running the tip of your nose against my chest that you wanted to kiss me there. You'll find everything starts to come naturally when you just...let it happen." I don't mention the erotic literature I've read. To be fair, that was only a lesson in the technical side of intimacy. Everything else I had to figure out on my own.

She shifts against me, and I feel her rub herself against my thigh. It's a bold and intentional move that she makes no effort to hide, and she's still considerably hot and moist. "I actually think that's what I just did," she says wryly. She squirms against my thigh again, and I smile as I feel a bit of moisture rub off on my skin.

"Peeta," she says apprehensively after a short silence, "when I'd just brought you back to the cave in the arena, after I'd found you by the stream...you were trying to tell me something, in case you didn't make it back, but I stopped you. ...What were you going to say?"

I do my best not to outwardly react, but the question instantly makes me nervous. Feverish and delirious and blinded by excruciating pain as I was, I still clearly remember that moment, the relief and elation I felt when she found me and cared for me. I'd been so in pain from the open wound in my leg that dizziness clouded my vision and I felt faint and nauseous, having to concentrate on my breathing just to stifle the urge to vomit. Not that anything would have come up anyway, as I hadn't eaten in days. That she showed genuine concern for me, that she did her best to patch me up and be strong for me even though I could tell how conflicted she was inside, only amplified eleven years of adoration and longing for her. As close to death as I was in that moment, I didn't want to go without her knowing. If I was about to draw my last breath, it would be spent on telling her what I needed her to know.

"Do you know what I said to Haymitch when I first started training privately with him?" I say after a moment's deliberation. "' _Why her?_ Why did it have to be _her_? _Anyone_ but _her_.' Truth be told, I...got a little violent. I threw things. Broke things. The way you saw me in Eleven in the Justice Building...that was tame, compared to how I lost my shit the first time I spoke with Haymitch privately. I'd spent so much time keeping my cool, swallowing my emotions, I just couldn't hold it in any longer. I'm sure I cost the Capitol a lot of money with the damage I inflicted. There are no words that can describe the sinking feeling I got when you volunteered for Prim at the reaping. I almost cried out to you. That was a defining moment for me, because after all those years of longing, the possibility became very clear that I would never, ever get to satiate it. I might never get the chance to talk to you. Part of the reason I asked to train privately with Haymitch was because I knew he'd be the only person to not chide me for going off my head. I didn't want you to see that side of me. I didn't want to alarm you. When he saw the state I was in, really began to understand the nature of my feelings for you, he knew it would be a good angle in the Games. He knew your cynicism and mistrust, and told me you'd take a lot of convincing. He said you'd likely never trust me. But when I thought I was going to die...all I really cared about was making sure you knew. I'd be hard-pressed to spend eleven years of my life with a hole in my heart only to leave this world without closure. Earlier, when you asked me how it felt to love someone the way I love you? I was on the verge of telling you that day in the cave."

She gives a little choked gasp - the hiccup of a stifled sob - and I feel the moisture of her tears on my shoulder. _Damn it_. I hate it when she cries. I hate when I'm the cause of it. I know that whatever emotion she must be feeling right now is beyond trite platitudes and condolences, so I say nothing, merely stroking her hair and placing the occasional kiss on her temple, sporadically tightening my embrace around her to remind her that my arms are still capable of providing some comfort. When I think about it, affection is the only way I really know how to comfort someone. There's only so much words can do in the face of paralyzing emotion. I keep getting vivid flashbacks of those days in the cave with her, the emotions I'm feeling now parallel to the ones I felt in those moments in the arena.

"I was so angry when you drugged me so you could go get the medicine for me from the Cornucopia," I whisper after a long silence, having let her cry herself out. "I felt so betrayed. But mostly afraid. For you. When I woke up after you'd returned, I was still a little angry, but you were passed out and there was _so much blood_...and in that moment, I can safely say it was the most intense fear I have ever felt in my life. Even more than when Cato fatally wounded me with his sword. For a moment, I'd thought you were dead. I took your hand, and it was so cold, but then I wrapped my fingers around your wrist and there was a faint pulse there, and I'd never been so relieved. ...I think that's why my lips are always so drawn to your throat and wrists, because the reassurance of your pulse is so comforting to me."

She shifts against me again, rubbing the mound between her legs against my thigh. She's seeping uncontrollably down there, having soaked clean through her underwear, and admittedly I find it a little gratifying. Her breathing is slow and heavy, and she's slightly tense, as though she's fighting every urge to squirm. "And then what?" she asks, a faint tremble in her voice.

"I bandaged you as best I could and waited, with nothing but the sound of your breathing to calm me. That's all I _could_ do...just sit, for hours, listening to you breathing. It was the most beautiful sound in the world. And when you stirred, I caressed your face and you leaned your cheek into my hand and smiled, just before you woke. It was a little like that moment a couple of days before the feast, when you fell asleep to me stroking your hair, and for just a second, I didn't feel so inadequate, because I felt that I brought some comfort to you. It was those little moments, where you responded to my touch, that really kept me alive in the arena. I think...had it not been for those moments, I would have died anyway. You gave me hope."

I hear her draw a deep breath, and her body arches against me, her palm smoothing over my collarbone and up my neck so that she can run her fingers through my hair. I turn my head and press my lips to her wrist again, delighting in the small shudder that runs through her body at the gesture. "You lost a part of your body," she says quietly, her hand trailing down to nervously touch my artificial limb. It's the first time since the post-Games interview with Caesar that we've talked about it. She becomes a little more assertive when she sees my encouraging expression, how I don't shy away from the subject. Her fingers run over the seam where flesh meets metal and plastic, giving what's left of my thigh a gentle squeeze. "Tell me what it was like. ...It must have been awful."

I nod. "I won't lie, it was, at first. The first time I woke up after we were taken out of the arena, I was in a haze of sedatives and painkillers, not entirely sure where I was. I felt anxious and sore, and wanted to get up and walk around, and I couldn't feel the pain in my leg anymore, so I figured they'd fixed me. That's when I swept back the sheet that covered me and was met with the rather shocking image of the stump I was left with, wrapped in bloody gauze and bandages."

She gives a shrill gasp, and I see her chin tremble slightly, tears welling in her eyes. I place my thumb on her chin to steady it, placing a light kiss on her lips to comfort her. "It's pretty devastating, losing a limb. Takes a toll on your mental state. I screamed a bit, until I felt something cold enter my veins from the tube in my arm, and was knocked out again for a while. When I awoke again, I was still a little fuzzy, but calmer. It was a counterfeit kind of calm, so I know I'd been sedated, but I was at least lucid enough to talk to a head doctor they'd sent in to evaluate my condition, help me begin to cope with the loss. Gave me the speech about how depression and anger are normal feelings in the immediate aftermath of losing a limb, that I could live a totally normal life. I cried a lot. Didn't eat. Then I'd just sit and stare listlessly for hours. Sometimes...my night terrors, the rare ones that aren't about losing you...are about that moment I woke up and found my leg gone. I was never told about it beforehand, you see. They'd tried to save it, but it was too far damaged at that point, and they ended up having to hack the whole thing off during emergency surgery." I feel her cringe at my candor, and my arms briefly tighten around her again. "Still, I got to live, and the prosthetic is pretty damn reliable," I add, trying to lighten the moment.

I flex the artificial limb a little beneath her fingers, watch her wide eyes as they look upon it in fascination. "Sometimes I'd feel the pain from the wound I had in the arena again, only to find that part of my leg wasn't even there anymore. Or I'd get an itch on an ankle that doesn't exist. It was really strange, and at some points I felt like I was going insane, but the head doctor told me that was normal. Phantom pains, they call them. At some point I was knocked out again and the next time I woke, I was being fitted for the prosthetic. I had to be sedated again for surgery, so they could connect the cybernetic implants to my nerve endings so the limb would respond to my impulses. Had to learn how to walk again, but it came to me quickly enough with therapy. It works just as good as the real one did, if not better. I came to adapt to it. Losing a limb was a small price to pay to get to keep you."

"Peeta," she gasps, choked with a sob. "I'm hardly worth - "

I silence her with a kiss, having already predicted her response. I'm really in no mood for it. She'd tried to blame herself when she first found out I'd lost my leg, thinking it was because of a tourniquet she'd applied to keep me from bleeding to death. We were on live television though, and I hadn't the heart to sternly correct her that it was because some punkass kid from District Two stabbed me in the leg with a sword. I'd never speak it aloud or admit it to Katniss, but I'm glad the cocksucker died slowly. "Again, that's not up for you to decide," I say softly, maneuvering her off of my shoulder so I can lay her back against the pillows and raise up on my side. "And you have seeped mercilessly all over my thigh, so I think we should do something about that, hmm?"

She sighs and closes her eyes in agreement.

I touch her face, trace her eyebrows, the curve of her cheek, trail my fingers down the line of her throat. She's squirming incessantly now, the tiniest of whimpers escaping her every few seconds. I reach down and faintly drag my fingers along the moisture seeping through her underwear, and she lifts her hips in response. I only give her this fleeting reprieve before I withdraw my hand, and she moans in disappointment. "Peeta, please..." she whines.

That low, devious chuckle resurfaces from the back of my throat. "Oh, we're begging now?" I say sardonically. She fixes me with a petulant glare. She seems about ready to jump out of her skin, and I smooth the hair back from her forehead. "You said last night that you sometimes touch yourself when thinking of me," I say, softening my tone. "Do you remember that?"

She gasps a little, but nods slowly and I bite my lip to keep from smiling.

"Would you like to show me?" I ask tentatively, remembering how much the image of her pleasuring herself excited me.

A blush stains her cheeks, but at this point she's so consumed with arousal and discomfort that she's desperate for relief, and I see her hand twitch toward the aching spot between her legs. "It's okay," I reassure her, gently guiding her hand between her legs.

She closes her eyes and begins rubbing herself through her underwear, stroking herself in a slow back and forth motion with two fingers. Her brows pucker together in a delicious expression of helplessness, and it's not long before she's slipping her fingers beneath the waistband of her underwear and rubbing herself without the hindrance of fabric. I watch her in unimposing silence for a moment, hypnotized by the lethargic movement of her hand and the way her hips writhe with each stroke. She seems to become lost in herself after a minute, and the rhythm of her fingers increases in intensity as she rubs herself a little harder.

"What am I doing in your fantasies when you touch yourself?" I say quietly, leaning in close so that my lips tickle her ear when I speak. "What do you think about?"

She hesitates, a wrinkle deepening in the center of her brow. "Your mouth," she gasps, her hand never stopping its rhythm.

"And what am I doing with my mouth?" My voice is back to its low purr, my nose grazing through her hair.

"Kissing me."

"Kissing you where?" I incline my head to the side and place a finger beneath her chin, tilting her jaw back. "Here?" I gently press my lips to her throat. She moans and her pulse flutters erratically against me. "Or how about here?" I lightly drag my lips down the line of her throat, placing a light kiss in the valley above her collarbone. "Maybe...here?" My lips find the curve of her breast, and I place an open-mouthed kiss on her nipple, giving it a gentle bite through the fabric of her camisole. She arches against me, pressing her breast harder into my mouth, and my fingers find the hem of her shirt so I can begin inching it up. She stops rubbing herself just long enough to raise her arms so I can pull the garment over her head, and her hand immediately disappears back beneath the waistband of her underwear. I chuckle as I take her exposed nipple in my mouth, circling it with my tongue as I match the rhythm of her fingers while she pleasures herself.

"Or perhaps...down here?" I say, releasing her nipple from my mouth as my hand travels down between her legs, disappearing into her underwear so I can still her hand and replace it with mine. "Mmm, Katniss...so delightfully wet." I press my forehead against hers as I rub my fingers along her slit, then kiss her and push my fingers into her, closing my eyes at the way she feels inside. Her muscles are incredibly tight around my fingers, and I try not to think about what it would feel like to be inside her. She lifts her hips to welcome my fingers, and I push them deeper inside of her as my thumb finds her clitoris.

"What else do you think about?" I whisper, my thumb beginning a slow, circular massage against that magical bit of flesh.

"You," she sighs. "...inside me."

My heart jumps. "My fingers?"

She shakes her head.

I bring my lips to her ear again. "My cock?

She gives a long, low moan, and I feel a fleeting spasm of her muscles contracting around my fingers. She's almost there.

"Katniss," I whisper, briefly taking her earlobe between my teeth, "do you want me to fuck you?"

"Yes," she gasps breathlessly. She doesn't even hesitate.

"Mmm," I grunt against her neck, parting my lips and giving her a gentle bite there as I slowly slide my fingers in and out of her, still maintaining that careful rhythm with my thumb. I feel her stomach go taut beneath me, and the spasms around my fingers are becoming more prolonged and closer together.

"Do you want to feel me inside you?" I coax, increasing the pressure of my thumb.

This time she can't even vocalize, she merely answers with something between a pant and a sigh. I give her neck another gentle bite, nipping at her flesh just enough to give her a fleeting amount of pain but not enough to leave a mark. My fingers are moving at an increased pace, keeping a steady, elevated rhythm that keeps her on edge.

"Come for me, Katniss," I mumble against her throat, and I feel two erratic beats of her heart before she's arching against me, her insides clamping down around my fingers as she floods me with even more of her fluids, a strained sound coming from her that sounds like a hybrid of a whimper and a moan. It could even be a sob, out of context. I've come to know this sound well. She always sounds like she's mildly in pain when she climaxes, and it's the most erotic sound I've ever heard.

Her head is thrown back, and I place a trail of soft kisses along the arch of her throat as my fingers slow their rhythm inside her, eventually coming to a stop as her spasms taper out. Her brows are still puckered, her mouth slightly open as she pants from the exertion, and when I no longer feel her muscles spasm around me, I gently withdraw my fingers.

"Your orgasm face is the same as your about-to-sneeze face," I whisper playfully, leaning forward to kiss her forehead.

She gives a half smile and huffs once, too breathless to actually laugh. She then shifts uncomfortably, making a face and reaching down to squirm out of her now-soaked underwear. I place a firm but gentle hand on her thigh, holding it in place as I pat her clean with a corner of the sheet, keeping a steady gaze on her face as she watches me.

"How are you such a gentleman but still so seductive at the same time?" she muses distantly, laying against the pillows and seeming as though she's going to drift off to sleep again. It makes me consider blowing off the whole day and spending it in bed with her.

I shrug. "I never really thought of myself that way. I guess I just like to always keep a conscious balance between what women want and what they need." And of course by _women_ I mean _Katniss_. Only ever Katniss. Always.

I hear her mother stirring outside, and somehow I know she's been lurking around, courteously waiting for an opportune time to tend to Katniss' injuries. I'm sure we're in for a lecture, or at least a passive-aggressive rebuke, but we get none. I'm convinced the moment from that morning was just an isolated incident anyway, a fluke inspired by the enchanting narcotic of sleep syrup.

I still come visit Katniss everyday during her convalescence, bringing her various baked goods and drawing sketches for her family book, recording all the information of things we've learned. At some point I notice the way she closely watches me while I work, her eyes lingering on my hands, the expression on my face. Sometimes when I casually recline in a chair with my knees apart, her eyes linger on the area between my legs, openly scrutinizing the bulge in my pants with an almost feral expression. I pretend not to notice, because I know it will make her uncomfortable. It should make _me_ uncomfortable, that she stares at me so intensely while I work, but I find something comforting about it. Just another testament that she feels _something_. I find simple joy in carrying her downstairs every afternoon, cherishing the feel of her arms around my neck, her cheek at my collarbone. I'm charmed that she mentions how I carry her with such ease despite my artificial limb, that she suggests I'm the pinnacle of strength and manhood.

One day as I sketch and make idle conversation with her, I see her squirm out of the corner of my eye, noticing that she's rubbing her thighs together in that way she did when the ache of desire became so overwhelming for her that she couldn't sit still. I avert my eyes from the parchment I'm shading, fixing her with a coy gaze while remaining motionless in my seat. Her eyes lock on mine, and I slowly rise and go to her side, taking her hand and bringing her wrist to my lips just to delight in the tremble I know will come. My hand comes to rest on her thigh, and I firmly guide it away from the other, parting her legs just enough so I can slide my palm up the inside.

" _Whatever you need_ , Katniss," I whisper, echoing my words from that night.

She reaches over and takes the teacup she's been sipping all morning, draining it in one swallow. "My mother started stocking the pantry with this herb the Capitol engineered, and she's been making tea from it for me everyday," she says casually.

"Is it any good?" I ask, thinking this is an odd segue.

She shrugs. "It's all right. But what's remarkable about it is that it prevents pregnancy."

She lets the words hang in the air so I can let them sink in, understand what it implies. Her mother knows we've been intimate to some degree. She expects we will continue to do so indefinitely. She's not in the mind to keep it from happening. It makes me wonder if at some point Katniss suggested that she wished to maintain an intimate relationship with me. I lean forward and kiss her, and it turns out so deep and passionate that I'm thankful the door is closed.

"Good," I say finally, my voice dropping to that beguiling octave that makes her squirm. "That means you can fall asleep with the warmth of my seed in your belly." She moans and roughly tangles her fingers in my hair, pressing me to her mouth again in an impulsive, hard kiss that causes a violent stir in my groin. Perhaps that morning wasn't an isolated incident after all.

* * *

It's not long afterwards that President Snow announces the conditions of the Third Quarter Quell. I'm not sure I'm surprised. Of course there could never be two victors in one year. We'd offset the balance of things by cheating. A part of me is unreasonably calm at this announcement, perhaps the result of my perpetual lingering dread since the last Games and my subtle understanding that there's no way the Capitol would ever let that slide, that we'd be forever in danger for defying them, that they'd eventually find some way of righting their error simply out of spite. I'm actually relieved now that it's clear how they'll retaliate toward our little act of rebellion.

Haymitch seems to be placating me with a little too much ease when I pressure him into a deal. I don't even pretend to find his platitudes convincing, but he's all I've got. I have to at least make an effort. I take my leave, and just as I'm shutting my door against the cold, I see Katniss plowing across the Village and into his house, an ironic smile touching my lips. Of course, she's going to try to make the same bargain with him that I did. It's when I see her stumble out of his house moments later, tripping over herself and straight into Gale's embrace that makes my heart sink a little. He sweeps her up in his arms and carries her into her house, and I don't hear from her for a day. Naturally, she'd gotten drunk with Haymitch, and I'm a little angry with her. They're just alike, those two. It would be too easy for her to pick up his bad habits, and I don't think I have the fortitude to watch her downward spiral if she does. I'm so heated at the prospect of it that I'm a little harsh with them both the next time I see them that evening.

So it's to my surprise when she's at my door not an hour later, looking mildly haggard and with the closest to an apologetic expression I think she'll ever be able to achieve. Or perhaps that's just what she looks like when she's hopeless. I begin to step aside to let her in, but she plows into my arms with such force that I stagger back a little, her arms a vise around my ribcage.

"Katn-"

"Just hold me, Peeta," she breathes. She's hoarse and breathless, and I get the feeling she's dried out from crying.

I warmly return the embrace, whispering reassurances to her as I gently stroke her hair and back, and she's so weary from hangover and crying and anxiety that her body goes limp in my arms, sagging against me and threatening to fall to the floor had I not been holding her up. I sweep her up into my arms and carry her up to my bedroom, where only the dim sconces on the wall light the room. It will be noninvasive enough on her eyes. I sit her on the edge of the bed and help her get undressed, then lay her down and give a bleak smile at the immediate realization that this is the first time I've ever had her in my bed. Unfortunate that it had to be under these circumstances. I remove my own clothes, watching her shiver from the cold and weakness brought on by hangover, then slide in beside her, where she immediately melts into my arms.

"I'm sorry about earlier, at Haymitch's," I whisper against her hair, wincing as I recall how aggressive and cold I'd been. "You needed comfort and I was abrasive and unforgiving. I was such a cock."

She says nothing, and I see the muscle flex in her jaw as she clenches her teeth. I feel a pang of regret, thinking she's genuinely pissed at me.

"Katniss?" I try tentatively, my hand coming up to stroke her hair.

"Sorry," she says weakly. "I just don't feel so well. I'm still trying not to vomit."

Of course. Experiencing one's very first hangover in the face of anxiety and anger can do that to a person. "Here," I say, gently maneuvering her from my shoulder so I can raise up on my elbow. "You'll feel a lot better if you turn over on your stomach."

She meets my eyes then, and they're clouded and distant as if she's remembering something, then a flicker of something that looks like guilt or pain passes over her face but it's gone in an instant. I steady her as she turns over, her cheek nestling into the pillow with her facing me. She's still clenching her jaw, and I begin to rub slow circles in her lower back, occasionally rubbing my palm up her spine to soothe her.

"Slow, deep breaths," I whisper, and she follows my instruction, her jaw relaxing almost immediately. She's staring at me with drowsy eyes, and I suddenly get a flicker of what our future could have been, what might have happened had we somehow stifled the uprisings across the districts. My wife, dreamily laying naked in my bed after a day of baking and hunting, and perhaps after a long night of passion that could have resulted in our child. I clench my jaw to stifle the gasp that nearly becomes a sob at the image, and I instantly look away to hide the tears that have sprung to my eyes. _Fuck_. Where did that even come from? The image is gone as quickly as it appeared, and I'm left feeling hollow and hopeless for the make-believe future that would never happen.

I lean forward and kiss the back of her neck and her shoulders, coming to trace her spine with my lips, which brings a visible chill to her flesh. She lets out a sleepy moan, and I continue rubbing her back and covering her flesh with kisses until I'm sure she's fallen asleep. She startles me a little as she spontaneously trembles beneath my lips, and I notice her telltale sign of arousal when she begins to rub her thighs together and arch her hips back, the curve of her bottom rising up slightly in a suggestive movement that causes my cock to spring to life instantly. She lowers her hips and squirms a little, and I can tell she's rubbing herself against the sheets, desperate for relief.

With everything that's happened in the past day, our lives in the balance, it's very clear to me that my little game of teasing her and making her squirm is over. This is not the time or the place anymore. I can no longer play the seducer. ...But we're about to be thrown to slaughter again. Someone's not coming home. This is one of the last truly intimate moments we'll have together, especially out of the watchful eye of the Capitol. What better time than this? I pull the coverlet back as I run my palm over her curving backside while it rises and falls with another one of her uncomfortable squirms, and she grinds her hips into the bed to rub herself against the sheets again. I place my hands firmly on her hips to still her.

"Uh-uh," I scold her sternly. I lean in close so that my lips brush against her ear. "Only _I'm_ allowed to give you that relief." I surprise myself with how borderline aggressive I sound, my voice coming out in something that vaguely resembles a growl.

Her body stills immediately in my grip, and I slide my hand beneath her chin so that I can gently guide her head up from the pillow, tilting her chin back so I can nip at her neck. I want to savor that pulse against my lips, memorize it for my dying moments in the arena. She arches her hips back again, moaning as though she's genuinely in pain.

"Do you feel that?" I whisper against her ear. "How painfully aroused you are? Remember how that feels." I run the tip of my tongue along the curve of her ear. " _I_ did that to you."

She grinds her hips into the mattress again, an involuntary reflex as her body desperately tries to quell the ache between her legs. I give her backside a swift, sharp smack, leaving an angry red handprint that will fade within the hour. She lets out a shrill gasp, and I can see by the confusion in her face that she's battling with herself on whether to enjoy it or protest.

"What did I tell you?" I growl against her ear, my fingertips lightly caressing the stinging mark I've left on her skin, causing her to cringe and shiver at the same time. "Grind your hips into that mattress again and I'll see to it that your backside is stinging well up until your interview with Caesar. You'll be squirming in your seat in front of all of Panem."

I give her bottom another resounding smack just for good measure, and this time she moans and arches her back a little, her eyes closed and the faintest of smiles touching her lips, a dreamy expression settling onto her face which she tries to hide in the pillow. She doesn't want me to know she likes it. I smile in satisfaction, running a single finger along that reddened handprint and gloating in the chillbumps that raise up on her skin.

"It's just you and me here, Katniss. I could bring a healthy blush to that bottom of yours and no one would hear you cry out," I say deviously. Oh, the things we could get up to here, safely tucked away from the potential intrusion of mothers and sisters and prep teams and obnoxious escorts. For a small moment, I consider how far I could take this. If she would take my belt with as much fervor as she's taken the palm of my hand. I stifle a moan of my own, too aware of how painful my own arousal has become, and I realize I can't keep teasing her for much longer without it becoming unbearable for me as well.

I snake my hand under her and reach down between her legs to trace my finger along the length of her opening, and she's already soaked. I feel her body go rigid as she stifles the urge to buck against my hand, but after a moment's hesitation, she insolently rubs herself against my fingers anyway, knowing what will result.

"Mmm, it's like that, is it?" I say, withdrawing my hand from between her legs and firmly pulling her hips back so I can get in three clear smacks that echo throughout the room and cause me to draw away a remarkably stinging palm.

A muffled _hnnnggg_ dies into the pillow as she groans with pleasure, and I reach beneath her again and give her momentarily relief by rubbing a little circle around her clitoris, but draw my hand away within seconds, causing her to squirm and moan in impatience.

"Fuck me, Peeta," she sighs, her voice still muffled. These three simple words are nearly the death of me. My eyes dart to her face, which is still slack with unrivaled pleasure, her mouth open and her eyes closed as she pants helplessly into the pillow.

Her back is still arched with her hips slightly elevated from the bed, and I know she wants me to take her from behind. The offer is tantalizing enough, but I'm overwhelmed by the strong urge to have her breasts in my mouth, so I coax her over with a firm hand on her hip. "Come on, turn over," I say, my voice softening to a gentler tone. "Just for a moment. I want to be able to see your face for my first time."

I hear her gasp into the pillow, and it seems that she's momentarily forgotten that I'm a virgin. An easy thing to forget, I suppose, considering the things I've done to her. She turns over onto her back, shifting uncomfortably against the spot of moisture she's leaked onto the sheets and quite possibly a little at the way the fabric rubs against the sore handprints I've left on her backside. Her thighs part so easily for me, and I settle myself between her legs, letting her feel my erection against the inside of her thigh. I should probably be nervous, but I'm not. Ever since I was old enough to figure out how to satiate my own arousal, I've had ample time to fantasize about this, carefully plan out the details of this moment. I know what I'm doing.

She arches her hips against me, and I feel her moist opening rub against the tip of my erection, teasing me. Or perhaps teasing herself. I close my eyes to compose myself, then slide my hand beneath her and rest my palm in the small of her back, yanking her against my chest as I delicately push myself into her. She gives a small yelp and I feel something resist inside of her, and I wonder for a fleeting moment how many times she was with Gale. Was it just the one time? She's so delectably hot and tight inside, and again, no amount of reading could have aptly described this feeling. My head falls into her shoulder and I stay still for a moment, savoring the way she feels around me. She's not very well used, that much is clear. I can tell by the tension in her muscles, the slight tremble of her hands on my waist that I'm hurting her.

 _I'm hurting her_.

"Katniss, I'm so sorry," I gasp, still holding her against me and stroking her face with my free hand. "Just say the word and I'll stop."

"Don't ever stop," she gasps, and she arches her hips against me, taking me deeper inside her and causing me to choke on my own strangled gasps.

She's so small and birdlike, and I can feel the resistance of her pelvic bones, which aren't quite wide enough to accommodate me. I fleetingly wonder how she'd ever be able to bear children. I'm afraid I might quite literally split her in half. I cradle the back of her neck in my free hand and softly kiss her, withdrawing a little and gently pushing back into her, savoring the hot, spongy feel of her insides as they tighten around me. She's so maddeningly wet, and I'm flattered that she seems to always be so ready for me. I continue with slow, tentative thrusts, honoring my promise to always be gentle with her. As if I could ever be anything else. Her fingers tangle in my hair and I lean down to pinch her nipple between my lips, alternating between kissing and sucking before moving to the other. I give the side of her breast a firm bite, distracting her from the pain caused by my slow movement inside her, and I leave my teethmarks in the curve of her breast, gloating in the scandalous expressions I know will adorn her prep team's faces when they see it.

For a fleeting instant, I imagine it's our wedding night and she's my bride, still in her stockings and garters, flowing skirts hiked up as I take her, but the image becomes too painful so I abandon it and distract myself with her breast in my mouth again. Her hands are clutching my waist, smoothing up my back as I push into her, and I feel the beginnings of those undulating muscle spasms tighten around me, causing me to stop abruptly.

"Not yet, Katniss," I whisper, giving the side of her breast another playful nip on the sore welt I left there. How ironic if she was a little premature.

She responds with a whimpering moan that's tinged with pain, and it's clear she won't be able to hold it off for long. I keep her clutched firmly against my chest, my arms enveloping her as I work a gentle rhythm into her, pressing myself as deep inside her as I can go so that she clenches her teeth against the discomfort.

"Come inside me, Peeta," she gasps, and as if on cue, I'm immediately sent over the edge by her breathless request. I can feel her insides tightening around me, milking me for all I'm worth, and I realize she did this on purpose, knowing she couldn't last much longer. She tightens around me so violently that it's almost uncomfortable, her muscles constricting me to the point where I nearly go numb, and my vision is clouded by the dizziness that comes with release. Hundreds of times, I've experienced this feeling, but not with this intensity. I feel like I might pass out. I kiss her deeply as I empty the last of myself inside her, her insides spasming sporadically around me.

We lay tangled in each other's embrace for a moment, with me still rooted firmly inside her. Her breathing is shallow and slow, and I know she's on the verge of dropping off to sleep. She always passes out almost immediately after she climaxes. No stamina or discipline, that one. I kiss her face and smooth her hair back from her forehead, which is a little damp with exertion, then withdraw from her and roll onto my back, pulling her against my side and guiding her head to my shoulder.

"Peeta, promise me something," she mumbles against my collarbone.

"Anything."

"Let's do that every night until they throw us in the arena."

I laugh, not having expected this. "With pleasure." Of course, there's no telling how the reaping will go and whose name will be drawn, but I've already committed to the fact that it's going to be me. There's no way I'm letting Haymitch go in there with her.

I'm actually surprisingly content for a moment until I feel the wetness of her tears on my shoulder, and I know she's thinking about the future, about what very well could happen. I can't handle this. I begin to stroke her hair, a gesture that's become something of an involuntary reflex for me, hoping it will calm her, but she only sobs against me, causing a lump to rise in my throat. _Please don't do this now. I can't_. Her arms tighten around me and she clutches at me with feeble fingers, and I do my best to comfort her, my palm rubbing circles into her back as my lips find her hair and face.

"I can't lose you," she gasps, her voice breathless and almost incoherent as it's overwhelmed by a sob. I hate the pain in her voice, hate the way it cracks.

"You won't," I say automatically, wincing as I know this is probably a promise I won't be able to keep. I clench my teeth as that lump in my throat threatens to choke me.

"I can't lose the boy with the bread." She's barely audible, so choked by the urge to cry that her voice is nothing more than a breathless wheeze, but I hear her anyway. Tears sting my eyes. Is this how she's referred to me in her head all these years? That she had some endearing label for me, that she _did_ think of me after all. _The boy with the bread_. I think I'm going to lose it.

"Please," I choke out, my own voice wavering with sadness. "Don't do this now, Katniss." I tighten my arms around her, too afraid to let go.

"On the train that brought us home from the Capitol after the Games, when you'd thought it was all an act...already I felt you slipping away from me. You felt so far away in that moment and it crushed me and...what if it wasn't all an act, Peeta? What if some of it was real?" She's borderline hysterical now, her speech stifled with grief.

"I know," I reassure her, stroking her back and burying my nose in her hair, memorizing her scent. I'm afraid to say more because if I do, my voice will break and then I'll cry. And I can't do that right now. I need to keep it together for her.

"And I missed it. I took you for granted and never allowed myself to enjoy your kindness, your love. You have to live, Peeta. It has to be you."

Tears spill down my cheeks and I know I'm too far gone now. There's no holding it back. "Never. Then I'll have to live out the rest of my days alone and without you, and I don't have the strength to do that."

My voice breaks and she hears it, which triggers her into uncontrollable sobbing. We lay there, sobbing together, clasped tightly in one another's arms as if letting go would mean slipping away from each other forever, and it's a bittersweet moment when I realize now why she asked me that day what it felt like to love someone the way I love her.

It was because she was confirming what she already felt for me.

"Just hold me, Peeta."

" _Always_."

**Author's Note:**

> I've been noticing that some people are really salty about Gale. I've gotten a couple of really childish, insulting comments about it. Look, I don't want to get hostile about it, but I feel like there are a lot of naive people who look at everything through shipper-tinted glasses concerning that relationship and don't want to look at it from a realistic perspective. Get over yourselves and grow up. I know a lot of people in this fandom are teenage girls who don't have a lot of real life relationship experience so you look at it from a fairy tale perspective, but I am not a fairy tale writer. If you behave like an ass, I'm marking your comment as spam and that'll be the end of it. Let's all be adults please.


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